As much of a Fan of Figma as I am the one thing that drives me nuts is how Figma breaks connections between styles and components when imported into a new Figma environment.
For example, I set up and publish a set of common color styles in my personal Figma account. In that same account, I use these styles on my components that I also publish.
Here is where things don’t work, I have a new client that can benefit from these styles and components as a starting place for work I will do with them. I save the files as .fig files from my personal account, then open up these files in my client’s Figma account. I publish the same color styles (no name changes at all). When I open up the library file that contains the components, all the frames, objects, icons, etc. show that they still reference the color names that I assigned to them. The problem is Figma doesn’t recognize that these colors are coming from published styles. The result is that in my color panel I have two sets of the same colors and without reconnecting all the styles I have no way to make changes to the colors and have them update the components.
It is painful (even with select similar options/plugins) to update all the color styles that were used.
Second but related issue, If I import and publish my styles library and a component library into a new Figma environment, then I import a file from my personal environment that uses these components and styles, my expectation is that when I click on an instance in the new environment that I would find the library file that contains the component of the same name (that has been published). The result is that I get 404 errors. Again the name of the components and styles are exactly the same name as my personal environment. Even the project names are the same.
Can someone please offer some guidance to fix these issues? And possibly explain how Figma paths work?
As a workaround, I have resulted in using Gleb’s Master Plugin to help reconnect components, but similar to the styles this is still a painfully manual process that I have to repeat for every component.
If you are still reading, here are some things that I have tried that have not proven to help. In addition to the export and import method, I have also asked to be invited as an admin/editor to the new accounts so that I can see several teams at the same time. Then I duplicate a file in my personal environment then use the “move to project” option to move the duplicated file into the new team/project area. Even doing this everything breaks.
The one thing that I am curious about is if I converted my personal pro account to an organization account would I be able to put my client’s team pro account temporarily as a team that can share libraries? And if I did this then later decide to let the client’s work be independent from my organization account, will I run into the same problem where all of their styles and components will break connections? Or does converting my account to an organization account fix all of these issues?
Ultimately I would like to reuse as much work as I can when I get new clients.
Any help would greatly be appreciated.